Sony’s Xperia U is the next series smartphone by the company. To give clients quite a handful of options to choose Sony has launched the Xperia S, P, Sola, Go, Acro S and Miro in the market. The unique feature about this smartphone is that at this price range that comes with a dual core processor.
Design
Xperia U is bar shaped is very similar to the Xperia S which looks trendy and pleasing to all age group users. In the front it has 3.5-inch display with the earpiece in the middle. Front camera, notification LED and sensors at the top and the main control keys below. XperiaU has a transparent strip at the bottom that lights up when you press the three capacitive dots above it.The glossy design has a 3.5 mm audio jack and microphone on top and another mic on the bottom. You will also find a micro USB port on the left side of the phone and power, volume rocker and dedicated camera keys on the right.
The rear has the 5 MP camera lens with an LED flash, loudspeaker and old Sony Ericsson logo placed nearby the bottom. The back cover can be removed by sliding it upwards; beneath you will find a SIM card slot. The battery of the phone is non-removable. The glass strip below the display lights up on various colors, with white, blue, green, red, pink, yellow, orange, etc.
The phone is also capable of changing the colors of the strip according to the dominant color in the image that you are viewing in the gallery. A Mobile Bravia Engine powers the display and boasts of increased image quality, sharpness, contrast and saturation giving you an enjoyable viewing experience. The display comes with an anti-reflection coating on mineral glass and is scratch-resistant.
Hardware
The Sony Xperia U is powered with the ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 SoC which includes 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9 CPU, Mali-400 MP GPU and 512MB of RAM. As for storage space, there is just 4GB of internal memory with no expansion slot and also has a separate 2GB for applications. One has to keep adding and removing content often to make space for more content.
The Xperia U supports USB On-The-Go, which means you can get an adaptor and connect a USB flash drive to the phone. If this was not there then the phone only supports USB flash drives that are FAT32 formatted.
Software
The Sony Xperia U runs on Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread with the Timescape UI at a time where Google has announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Even though these days most of the smartphones are coming with latest version of Android but still don’t know how Sony decided to use the older version. While everybody is launching Android 4.0 handsets, the U still comes with 2.3.7 Gingerbread on board.
Battery
The phone is powered by a 1320 mAh non-removable battery, that supports up to 6 hours of talktime when the phone is used on the 2G network and up to 5 hours of talktime on the 3G network.
Performance
The interface is smooth and lag free but it has little problem at times, which has now become identical with Android. The dual core processor gets the work done for daily tasks and multitasking. However, it’s worthy enough to mention that a few memory intensive applications tend to slow the phone down.
This became quite obvious while trying to play 720p content and other exciting applications. The home screen would take a little time to load up. Overall, the interface is neat and quick most of the times but if you are installing a ton of content with that limited memory, be sure that your are very tolerance person.
Media
The music application has a professional look due to minimalistic design. The interface gives you plenty of options like search, automatic music information downloader and SensMe channels that categorize the song based on different mood settings. There’s also a five band graphic equalizer with a bunch of preset and custom setting options. Sound quality is good and the headset gives you an enjoyable music experience. The video player only supports MP4 and WMV. Third party applications can be used but even they give problems at times because of low memory.
Camera
The Xperia U has a 5 megapixel camera capable of recording 720p videos. The quality of the images are ok but the colors look natural and the details of the images are really sharp. The white balance is off and low light images are not that clear unless you change the ISO level down manually. The videos has an over sharpened look.
Pros
- Android v2.3 (Gingerbread) OS
- 5 MP Primary Camera
- 0.3 MP Secondary Camera
- 3.5-inch TFT Capacitive Touchscreen
- 1 GHz Dual Core Processor
- FM Radio
- Wi-Fi Enabled
Cons
- Limited storage with no expansion options
- No Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of box
- Some competitors are slimmer
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